It is proposed here to use a naming system comparable to the E coli gene names
for objects in sequence databases. This seems a very simplified idea to me.
The naming system should not only include genes. Many sequence objects in the DB
contain no gene at all, but still need a name. What is the genetic name for a
198 bp repeat from Arabidopsis thaliana for which no genetic function is known
yet? and there is a second one of 179 bp with some common characteristics
We could call them A(rabidopsis)THA(liana)R(epeat)11 an ATHAR12. You need
a system of naming conventions for ALL independent objects, from all
kinds of organisms. And it will be a huge task to create an accepted
standard. It seems to me that scientists working with one organism still
have problems to get to a standard amongst themselves.
And to name objects, let's first define what an independent object is.
Secondly: I work in a lab generating lots of sequence (900000 bp this year,
resulting in about 70 kb of corrected sequences)
from all kinds of plant an bacterial organisms.
We sometimes run into genes for which we do not have te slightest
idea about their function. How do we give them a genetic name?
Jeroen Coppieters,
Lab of Genetics. University of Ghent , Belgium.
Please, do not pick on my syntax or grammar, but on the content only.